Charles Ellicott Commentary John 12:25

"He that loveth his life loseth it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal." — John 12:25 (ASV)

He that loveth his life shall lose it. The reading here is uncertain. It may be, and perhaps with slightly more probability is, He that loveth his life loses it—that is, that the loss of life is not only in the future, but that in the present, in every moment when a man loves and seeks to save his own life, he is then, and by that very seeking, actually losing it.

The words of this verse are familiar to us from the earlier Gospels and have been explained in Notes on Matthew 10:39, Matthew 16:25, Mark 8:35, Luke 9:24, and Luke 17:33. The disciples had heard them laid down as the law of their own life and work. They now hear the mysterious words again, and they are asserted as the law to which even His life is submitted.

There is even in His human nature a physical and emotional life which would shrink from sacrifice and death (John 12:27; compare Note on Matthew 26:39), but in self-sacrifice and death is His own glory and the life of the world.

There is in all human nature a principle which would seek as the highest good the life of the body and of the soul—as distinct from the higher life of the spirit—and would shrink from sacrifice and death; but the true principle of life is of the spirit, and only in the sacrifice of the desires of the lower physical and emotional life is that spiritual life realized.